


Snowballs at Ten Paces

by Rose_of_Pollux



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 15:47:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5933923
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_of_Pollux/pseuds/Rose_of_Pollux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Zoe has never been in a snowball fight, so the Doctor is ready to remedy that--with Jamie's help, of course.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Snowballs at Ten Paces

The Doctor had been very secretive as to where they were going.  Though Zoe, still a newcomer, questioned as to where their destination was, Jamie didn’t seem to be too interested; prior experience had told him that it didn’t matter too much what the Doctor wanted; more often than not, it was the TARDIS who had the final say in the matter.  That being said, the Doctor seemed pleased at where the TARDIS had landed—thus giving credence to the idea that the TARDIS actually listened to him for once.

 _Aye, miracles do happen_ , the piper thought to himself.

The Doctor disappeared into the wardrobe for a while and returned wearing his gigantic fur coat, carrying some winter wear for Jamie and Zoe.  Zoe took a moment to stare at him; it was the first time she had ever seen him in that coat, and she was halfway between stunned and amused.

“Why are you wearing _that_?!” she asked.

“Well, it’s not _real_ fur,” the Doctor assured her.  “It’s a synthetic fur from Thraxis, and it’s quite warm.”

“…But it looks ridiculous!” she exclaimed.  “You can easily get a well-insulated coat that’s more fashionable!”

“But that wouldn’t be any fun, would it?” the Doctor asked.  “Not to worry; I made sure to get you a coat that is both warm _and_ fashionable.”

He handed her one of the sets of winter wear he was carrying; Zoe seemed satisfied by it, but she was still unable to take her eyes off of the Doctor’s fur coat.

“Ye should have been there with us when we visited Tibet,” Jamie said, as he put on his own, normal-looking coat.  “Victoria and me, we nearly mistook him for one of the Yetis because of that coat.”

“But the Yetis are just myths, aren’t they?” Zoe asked.

Jamie and the Doctor exchanged glances.

“…Well, there are no Yetis here, where we’ve landed, and that’s the important thing,” the Doctor said, at last.

“Aye, and no Great Intelligence, either,” Jamie sighed.

“Oh, now you’re both talking nonsense,” Zoe tutted.

It was clearly some sort of inside joke, so Zoe didn’t press the subject; she followed the Doctor and Jamie out of the TARDIS, puzzled to see that they had landed in a snow-covered field.  Sunlight was sparkling off of the fresh snow.

“Well, what do you think?” the Doctor asked.

“It’s… empty,” Zoe said, not seeing any sort of building around.  In fact, other than a few trees nearby that marked the edge of a forest, there wasn’t anything at all.  “I don’t understand what I’m supposed to be looking at.”

“It’s a bonny place,” Jamie breathed.  “Reminds me of the glens back home…  I remember one winter, we had so much snow; Alexander and Kirsty and my brothers and me, we ran aboot trying to see who could last in the cold the longest.  I lasted the longest oot of all the laddies!”

“Oh, yes?” the Doctor asked.

“Aye,” Jamie said, and then he went slightly red.  “…And then Kirsty went and ootlasted me…”

The Doctor laughed aloud at this.

“Well, judging from what I know of her, I can quite easily believe that!  …Of course, you’d all be able to outlast me…”

“And I enjoy the fact that it’s one of the many things I can do better than ye,” the piper replied.

The Doctor’s eyebrows arched.

“ _Really_?” he challenged.

“Oh, aye,” Jamie smirked.  “And as long as ye’re wearing that yeti coat, I also have better mobility on the snow than ye do.”

He demonstrated his agility by running a couple of laps around the Doctor as the Gallifreyan began to trudge away from the TARDIS.  The Doctor lovingly chided the Scot, the two of them starting to banter with each other.  Zoe, on the other hand, stood in front of the TARDIS, still puzzled.

“But, Doctor, what are we doing here?” she asked.

“We’re here to have a bit of fun!” the Doctor called to her.  “A little winter walk is the perfect prelude to a nice rest by the fireside, wouldn’t you say?”

“…I wouldn’t know…” Zoe said, as Jamie hopped back towards her.  “Snow wasn’t something we had on the Wheel.”

“Aye, I suppose not,” Jamie said.  “Well, the Doctor always lets us run around in the snow for a bit around Christmastime.  Once we’ve warmed up by the fire after this, he’ll probably take us to some city so we can go shopping for gifts for each other.”

Zoe stared at him.

“If you don’t mind my saying, that seems to be a departure from what we usually do,” she stated.

“Aye, but it’s Christmas!  It’s time to have some fun, like the Doctor said!” Jamie pointed out.  “What did ye do on the Wheel when it was Christmas?”

“Well, we usually got to have a special meal—freeze-dried goose, dehydrated vegetables, and, for a dessert, freeze-dried ice cream,” Zoe said.  “Other than that, it was mostly business as usual.  …Though one year, they managed to get a dehydrated sprig of mistletoe in with the rations…  But I have to say, I never really understood the appeal of kissing under a bit of plant matter.”

“…That’s all ye did?”

“Well, we were in the middle of space, Jamie; we could hardly go to Tesco and get chocolate oranges, could we?”

“Aye, good point,” Jamie admitted.

Zoe now turned her attention back to the Doctor, who was practically frolicking in the snow.

“If he doesn’t respond to the cold well, then _why_ does he do that?” she wondered aloud, shaking her head.

“Och, ye know him; he likes to live dangerously,” Jamie said, with a wave.  “He should be alright as long as he has that coat on.  …And that means that I can do this…”  The piper now scooped a handful of snow from the ground and molded it into a ball as a mischievous glint formed in his eye.

“And what are _you_ doing?” Zoe inquired.

“Shh!  This is just a wee bit o’ fun, too,” the Scot said, putting a finger to his lips.  “He’s completely oblivious right now, and I intend to take advantage of it.  I don’ get this chance verra often. ”

Zoe was quickly putting two and two together as Jamie crept towards the Doctor, snowball in hand.  Despite herself, Zoe seemed eager to see what was going to develop.

Jamie finally threw the snowball once he had gotten close enough; the snowball hit the Doctor’s shoulder, where it splattered snow on his coat, hair, and even a little bit on his face.  The Doctor yelped, brushed the flakes off of face, and then turned around sharply to face the guilty party.

Jamie’s triumphant little laugh turned into an embarrassed chuckle as the Doctor stared at him for a moment.  Suddenly, the air was thick with flying snow; the Doctor and Jamie started lobbing handfuls of snow at each other, not even bothering to shape them into spheres before pelting each other with them.

“This is another thing that humans are just better at!” Jamie taunted.  “Ye may as well surrender!”

“Never!” the Doctor vowed, doing a bizarre pirouette to dodge Jamie’s latest handful of snow.  “My heightened senses can give me an edge in this—”

 _Splat_!

A snowball, flying in from the side, caught him off-guard and now gave his hair a further dusting of snow.  Jamie began to laugh uproariously, until—

 _Splat_!

A second snowball flew in from the side and caught the piper unaware, as well.  Both the Time Lord and the Piper turned to see Zoe standing before a small pile of perfectly molded snowballs, while holding an additional snowball in each hand and keeping a smirk playing about her lips.

“You’re right,” she said.  “This _is_ fun!”

Jamie and the Doctor responded by attempting to lob handfuls of snow at her; they fell short of their mark, and Zoe tutted before tossing her perfectly-crafted snowballs at them, which, being more aerodynamic than shapeless lumps of snow, hit their marks.

Jamie realized he wasn’t going to reach Zoe, but rather than take the time to perfectly craft a snowball, he just lobbed the next handful of snow at the Doctor.  This caused the Doctor to turn his attention back to Jamie, while Zoe continued to pelt them both from a distance, until she ran out of her stock of snowballs, forcing her to get closer and lob snow at the other two.  It was then that a free-for-all broke out; each of them started throwing snow at the other two without even bothering to try to dodge.

There was no clear winner; all three of them were covered in powdery snow by the time the Doctor decided he’d had enough.  Soon, they were sitting on the hearth-rug in front of a roaring fire, each drinking a mug of hot cocoa.  The Doctor regarded his mug of cocoa with a wan smile before he drank from it, his mind temporarily drifting to a brief encounter in Mexico before he brought his mind back to the present.

Jamie and Zoe were both in the midst of giggles, both of them still highly amused from the snowball fight.  It warmed the Doctor’s hearts to see them both so happy—a young Jacobite who had once thought he could never be happy again, and a lonely young genius who had probably never even thrown a snowball before today.

And, of course, there was no possible way the Doctor could express how much joy that the two of them had already given him.  He, who had once dismissed humans like the rest of his species, now gladly considered these two humans nothing less than family.  And to know that he could have a role in their happiness was an indescribable feeling.

It didn’t matter what they would end up getting for him later when it would be time to do their shopping—the Doctor already had everything he could have ever wanted.


End file.
